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Pack your suitcase
Let’s get the nasty business of Jason Castro forgetting the words on tonight’s American Idol top four performance show out of the way. Jason, if you have a hard time with complicated lyrics, you probably shouldn’t try to tackle a Bob Dylan song, even “Mr. Tambourine Man.” But come on! The easiest words Dylan ever wrote, “jingle jangle morning”? (Well, except for “everybody must get stoned,” but that’s another story.) The funny part is that if it hadn’t been for that gaffe, this might have been one of Jason’s best performances. (Not that that’s saying a lot, frankly.)

Everybody else was pretty good, but I didn’t think Syesha Mercado was as good as the judges said she was, and I thought David Cook was better. David Archuleta might have made a mistake, though. Looking soulfully into the camera and singing “Love Me Tender” probably paralyzed the little girls in his fan base so that their texting fingers wouldn’t work.

Could it be that Randy was the only judge who actually heard Syesha’s performance of “A Change Is Gonna Come”? We know from last week that they base some of their comments on what they hear in dress rehearsal, so I wouldn’t be shocked to know that Simon and Paula were watching Dancing With the Stars while Syesha was singing, because it sounded knife-edge shrill in parts to me. I liked her much better on “Proud Mary,” but she wasn’t as good as the last two weeks.

The two Davids were definitely my top two this week. Cook was solid on both his songs, and he gets extra props for calling the Who song by it’s correct name (“Baba O’Riley,” not “Teenage Wasteland”). Archuleta never misses a note, but he was particularly brilliant on “Love Me Tender.” Every so often little David takes a ballad and turns it into something sublime, and you never can doubt his commitment to a song. The truth is, I don’t think either of the Davids can do what the other one does. Maybe they should be co-winners?

By the way, here is where you can find the list of 500 songs they had to choose from.

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